By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — The game wasn’t merely about Matt Cain and his vexing month of winless pitching. Then again, it was mostly about Matt Cain.
When a guy is your ace, throws a perfect game, is the All-Star starter and then has zero for April in the victory column, he is the central character in the mystery.
Dodgers-Giants remains the essential component of San Francisco baseball, as the unrelenting chants of “Beat L.A., Beat L.A.” bear witness. The final score means everything.
Sunday night’s final score, 4-3 in favor the franchise that carried “GIGANTES’’ on its uniforms for Cinco de Mayo, meant those Gigantes had swept the three-game series from Los Angeles.
Yet the Cain performance was not to be underestimated. To the Giants, who knew once more Matt was the rock of a pitching staff that is the team’s strength, and yes, to Cain himself.
No matter how much success a player has experienced, an 0-2 record with a 6.49 earned run average in six games must be bewildering at the least.
He and probably everyone else knew sooner or later the wrongs would be corrected, but the issue was when. The response was delivered by Cain along with his fastballs and breaking pitches in 7 1/3 reassuring innings.
“It was a solid effort,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy of Cain. “A great job. No runs.”
Until an eighth inning Bochy said has become all too familiar for the Giants, when a 4-0 lead ebbed, relievers entered and departed and the normal sellout crowd of 41,000-plus at AT&T Park wondered why it always had to be so nerve-wracking.
“Our boys made it entertaining,” said Bochy, who by his subsequent smile made us understand he’d accept something less so. “It’s our nature. We made it close.”
But close or not, it was the Giants’ sixth straight win, three over the Dodgers, each by a run, after three over Arizona, following five straight defeats. Some chewed fingernails, some beautiful hitting — Sunday night Hunter Pence drove in all the San Francisco runs — and a lot of happy patrons.
The mini-achievement, Cain getting off the schneid for 2013 and also becoming the first Giant starter in 12 games to get a victory — oh, that bullpen has been spectacular — was simple enough.
“I didn’t make as many mistakes,” said Cain, “and some of the mistakes I was making were hit at guys.”
It is a baseball truism that nothing in the game is fair. Line drives are caught — as three line drives, or at least deep flies, off Sergio Romo were caught in the top of the ninth — while bloops and dribblers fall for hits.
“A couple ground balls go through,” Bochy said of the Dodgers' eighth. “Then in the (top of) ninth, hard-hit balls right at them.”
Still, it isn’t only a matter of fortune. When a pitcher is sharp, the breaks, good or bad, don’t have that much of an effect. Twice this season, Cain had given up three home runs in a single game. Sunday night he allowed nothing more destructive than a first-inning double by Matt Kemp, who never moved from second.
“All of the starters hadn’t been doing what we wanted to do,” said Cain. “To get off that skid, it just took some time.
“I had those bits where I was giving up home runs while ahead in the count. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that, but about bearing down and just thinking about pitching. (Catcher Guillermo) Quiroz did a good job keeping me focused.”
Cain gave up five hits and three walks and, although charged only with one of the Dodger runs, still has an ERA 5.57. It will decline.
There was a report on ESPN, which televised the game nationally, that the Giants felt Cain’s problems were physical, he had dropped the angle of his delivery, causing his balls to flatten out. Bochy was in full denial about that or any other issue with Cain’s body.
“I never thought something was wrong with Matt,” said the manager. “I said along he was healthy, his arm was fine. And tonight he showed it.”
Cain was not one to disagree,
“My arm always felt good,” Cain said. “I was just making bad pitches. I didn’t pitch well. Tonight I made better pitches at times. Yes, sometimes when you make a bad pitch they’ll pop it up, but that wasn’t what happened.”
The Giants continued a remarkable record. Never in their 56 years in San Francisco have they lost a home game to the Dodgers when they built a lead of three runs or more.
That beat goes on. Matt Cain’s beating finally has changed.
“The most encouraging part,” answered Cain when asked, “was I got kind of better as the game went along.”
He’s a winner now. Of course, he always has been.